ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
SAT Writing Videos 88 videos
What do austronauts and Michael Jackson have in common? Watch this video on sentence structure to find out!
Learn about effective language use from austronauts that like hoarding moon rocks in this SAT writing drill!
What's the whole essay about? How does time control or matter to the essay as a whole?
Where Does the Comma Go? 13 Views
Share It!
Description:
Where does the comma go? Before "which", you always need one. Except in this example. Non-restrictive clauses are almost always set off with commas. Freakin' commas.
Transcript
- 00:03
okay SAT writing shmoopers eight of
- 00:06
eleven here....[mumbling]
- 00:17
focused right there on the underlying
- 00:20
part dinner which was beef stew alright
- 00:23
where did that come from all right so
Full Transcript
- 00:25
let's cruise through the document here
- 00:27
and finally after two and a half busy [finger following sentence]
- 00:30
exhilarating hours it was time to go
- 00:31
they climbed back in the Eagle stowed
- 00:34
the rocks and prepared the ship for
- 00:36
departure then it was time for dinner
- 00:38
which was beef stew and by the way
- 00:42
people we're gonna point out one thing
- 00:43
here that relates to a previous question
- 00:44
here notice that they say they climbed
- 00:47
back in the Eagle stowed to the rocks
- 00:50
not stowed away the rocks and stowed the
- 00:53
rock so it's interesting that they used
- 00:54
correct grammar here whereas they didn't
- 00:57
in the question they actually drove
- 00:59
before so sometimes they give you a
- 01:01
little gifts like that all right back to
- 01:04
regularly-scheduled the commercial
- 01:06
programming so then it was time for
- 01:07
dinner which was beef stew and we're
- 01:09
clearly missing something here what do
- 01:11
you think that is well after a long day [astronaut walks back to spacecraft]
- 01:13
of moonwalking nothing sounds better
- 01:15
than a nice warm cup of beef stew we've
- 01:18
never been to the moon so that's
- 01:19
speculation but what we do know is the [beef stew appears]
- 01:22
meaning of the clause which was beefs do
- 01:25
is non restrictive meaning it's non
- 01:28
essential to the meaning of the sentence
- 01:30
you could cut it out and the sentence
- 01:31
would still live like if it were deleted
- 01:34
just go well then it was time for dinner
- 01:36
yeah it could stand alone like the
- 01:38
cheese as a sentence non-restrictive
- 01:40
clauses are usually set off with commas
- 01:43
and almost always before which you need
- 01:46
one so the answer there is dinner comma
- 01:48
which was beef stew let's look at the
- 01:50
loser bowl here yes are you guys knowing [person holding a loser bowl]
- 01:53
that dinner consisted of yummy stew
- 01:54
isn't essential to the sentence so we
- 01:56
know a comma is necessary so we know
- 01:58
there's a change
- 01:59
however the non restrictive clause only
- 02:01
needs to be separated from the rest of
- 02:02
the sentence no need to chop it up with
- 02:04
further punctuation so
- 02:05
see if a came before dinner in the
- 02:08
original sentence dinner of beef stew [vegetables appear]
- 02:11
would work but we plug it into the
- 02:13
sentences written while it reads then it
- 02:15
was time for dinner of beef stew which
- 02:18
may work in some old-timey flowery weird
- 02:20
British language kinda way the past
- 02:22
but sounds totally out of place in the
- 02:25
context and tone of this essay so that's
- 02:27
it it's dinner , and chow down
Related Videos
What do austronauts and Michael Jackson have in common? Watch this video on sentence structure to find out!
Learn about effective language use from austronauts that like hoarding moon rocks in this SAT writing drill!
What's the whole essay about? How does time control or matter to the essay as a whole?
Its...or is it it's? Watch this SAT drill to help unravel that age old question.
Cars and dashes. Yes, we're talking dashes not dashboards in this SAT Writing video.